Yoga Mat Printing on UV Flatbed/Hybrid Printer

[Julia Sugden]

Has anyone tried printing directly onto yoga mat material? We're thinking of printing directly onto 5 or 6mm thick yoga mat material. It is not coated for ink adhesion like most of our printable substrates. We currently only print on to smooth substrates, so I'm wondering:

Can we print directly onto regular yoga mat material
How will the printer settings (height of print heads, etc) differ from printing on flat substrate
Do we need to adjust any heat settings?

I'm hoping to get some insights before we do a test print. Really don't want a big mess or any headstrikes.

 

[Greg Kelm]

I wouldn't hesitate to try it on a true flatbed. Not on my Vutek though

 

[peterprintingparty]

As for head height, I would mic it (without squeezing the material) and print even a little higher than that. I can't imagine you'd be printing anything highly detailed. I'd run my lamps at the same I would most other things, I wouldn't worry about the material warping during print, but if you're worried, check your settings to see if you have a swath delay to cool down the material between passes. But yeah, on a true flatbed it wouldn't be much different than printing on a flat substrate. I've printed on some out weird things, just pay attention as you would with any new substrate.

 

[tbaker]

I have several clients that print them on a vutek without issue.

 

[Bly]

We've done a few on our Oce flatbed with no issues.
257 ink stuck well and is really flexible + no cracking.

 

[chinaski]

Also had good luck using Oce flatbed with 257 inks.

Try to get the mat in white (not commonly produced). Use as low of an ink limit as possible —I had to flood white first and adhesion was lacking in the blacks, also surface of mat is meant to have grip and adding a bunch of ink lessen this.

 

[petepaz]

i have printed on yoga mat with roland LEJ-640. everything went fine and adhesion was good. the issue we had was customer complained about the smell from ink

 

[Zach Starr]

I have done many Yoga mats with my Stratojet Shark EFB-2512, colors was perfect, adhesion good. Try adding white if you are not printing on a white mat, it really gives out nice colors!

 

[WYLDGFI]

We've done Yoga Mats on Vutek and Agfa. Vutek ink was quite strong as far as the odor. Agfa inks worked well and much less odor on those. Stuck fine and flexible. Just have to do your setup correctly...mic'ing out...etc. Lay them out flat as to relax them if at all possible. That will be your biggest worry.

 

[DaMegaPrinter]

Late to the party, but we print an average of 1-200 yoga mats per week on our AGFA H3200i. Running single or even double rolls, we have no issues at all with adhesion or color.

That being said, has anyone else tried running yoga mats 4-up?

We typically print these roll to roll, and have tried running 4-up for some larger orders with limited success.
The first job we tried this on, we found that the two outermost rolls (#1 and #4) printed fine where as the two in the middle (#2 and #3) had issues with ink adhesion. My assumption here was that since the carriage was travelling the full length of the bed, as it slowed near each end, those mats were getting adequate UV amount but the two in the middle were being passed over too quickly to get the same % of UV, therefore resulting in the poor adhesion.

I would love to be able to print yoga mats 4-up with no issues. But the more I try, the more I feel it's a wasted venture.